The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has asked former President Goodluck Jonathan to confess his sins and apologise to the nation over the revelation by Britain’s former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that he rejected help to rescue the abducted Chibok girls.
In a statement signed by its chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and secretary, Cassidy Madueke, Monday in Abuja, BMO said history would judge Jonathan harshly for treating governance as a matter of ego, without respect for lives and property.
“What other proof do Nigerians need to know that if Jonathan had been allowed an extra week in power, the country would have been in a worse state than Venezuela.
“Nigerians must appreciate the rescue mission embarked upon by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in the last four years. The country was a mess; governance was on auto-pilot with a president who was lukewarm towards his duties.
“The revelation by former Prime Minister Cameron in his book (For the Record) that Jonathan refused British assistance for the rescue of the Chibok girls after they were sighted shows how the country was managed by an incoherent leadership intent on driving her to either deliberate or irresponsible crash and wreckage.
“Even the late United States Senator, John McCain alluded to this when he told CNN, few weeks after the abduction, that if he were the then US President Obama, he ‘wouldn’t be waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck Jonathan’, in a clear reference to the indecision of the former president on a rescue mission.
“Which sensible president and leader would ever miss such an opportunity to save the lives of his abducted citizens?” the group queried.
It said former President Jonathan simply showed that he was not a patriot, and did not care for the Chibok girls, their traumatised parents, and Nigeria as a whole.
BMO said: “The Jonathan administration simply played politics with the lives of over 200 abducted school girls at a time the world’s focus was on Nigeria.
“We recall that the then Chief of Defence Staff, late Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh stated at a pro-government rally that the military authorities had been able to pinpoint the location of the abducted school girls, six weeks after the incident but ruled out military operations to rescue them at the time. Is this not a confirmation of what the former British Prime Minister said?
“The former president clearly made a mockery of serious business of governance and history would not be kind to him in spite of efforts to obfuscate issues with Nigeria’s rejection of gay marriage bill.
“We are also not surprised that Cameron claimed that Jonathan had turned the war against insurgency into a feast for his military chiefs.
“It only confirmed investigations carried out by the Buhari administration and the consequent prosecution of several senior military officers who helped themselves to funds meant for the war against terrorism, aside from dipping into it to fund the expensive lifestyles of PDP leaders and their friends.”
